CO Architects website
excerpts
Approach
We strive to design buildings that enrich the lives of the people who use them — buildings that gracefully fulfill functional and technical expectations, yet appeal as fully to the senses as to the intellect.
We pursue ideas that embody the timeless values of the institutions we serve. We believe good buildings reinforce the coherence of their surroundings and maintain their physical and cultural significance over time.
Clients and consultants are collaborative partners in our persistent search for the solution that best fits the needs of the program and site. Design emerges through a creative, iterative process of discovery.
Our senior staff share a common store of knowledge and experience, developed over nearly two decades, that informs every project. Principals actively lead project teams in a practice founded on a structure of participation.
We couple our depth of experience with a genuine delight in the craft and technology of building. We seek to rise above the exigencies of the program and budget to make memorable places that build community and celebrate the experience of being in a particular place at a particular time.
History
Founded in 1986 as a regional office of San Francisco-based Anshen+Allen, we became an autonomous practice a decade later. In 2005, to acknowledge the evolution of our firm, we formally changed our name from Anshen+Allen Los Angeles to CO Architects.
Our new name is intended to evoke our collaborative approach to determining the strategic needs of each project and the coherence we seek in our built work. These fundamental aspects of our firm remain unchanged, along with the active presence of our eight longtime senior partners, our 85-member staff and the nature of the work we do.
We are nationally recognized experts in academic, research lab and health care planning and design. Throughout our history, we have maintained that technical systems, planning, documentation and project management are all integrally important in the service of design. Numerous awards attest to our reputation for elegant solutions to the demands of complex projects.
Clients include: University of California (multiple projects on six campuses, including two medical centers), The Claremont Colleges, Kaiser Permanente, and the universities of Iowa, Washington and Wisconsin.
ACADEMIC PROJECTS
Ron W. Burkle Family Building
Peter F. Drucker Graduate Management Center
Claremont Graduate University
Claremont, Calif.
Completion date: 1998
For full-time students, the building is one of several important centers within the graduate university. For executives attending part time, the building is their campus. The courtyard — designed for large receptions, classes and informal study — symbolically and functionally defines this campus-within-a-campus.
Lowered one level from the street, the court allows direct access to the lower-level teaching spaces and functions as a breakout space for the flexible classrooms and case rooms. From the street, the building’s materials and massing maintain the scale and essential character of the surrounding campus. From the court, the transparent facade reveals its full three-story height as well as its internal functions and activities.
The entry level houses the lobby and administrative offices. Faculty offices and the dean’s suite are on the third level. One side of the study center pavilion opens to a terrace facing the street; the other side overlooks the courtyard.
HEALTH CARE PROJECTS
High Desert Medical Center
Lancaster, Calif.
The program consists of a 200-bed main hospital building, clinic and general services/central plant. Layers of enclosure, defined by rows of trees, buffer outside spaces against the harsher desert environment.
The AIA Citation of Excellence for this project praises the “effective functional relationships, logical expandability and discrete public access to individual service components [made possible by] a site plan that organizes access and parking in ways that make wayfinding inevitable.”
ENGINEERING PROJECTS
Bourns Hall College of Engineering
University of California, Riverside
Completion date: 1995
Two separate buildings (lab and office) incorporate features that take advantage of the arid inland valley climate — shaded terraces, central open-air lobbies, exterior circulation balconies and an open pedestrian bridge that bisects the courtyard and links the two structures. The circulation system is open on both axes, creating a pedestrian link between the original core campus and future development.
Each building is organized around an open-air central stair at either end of the connecting bridge. To maximize long-term adaptability, the lab building is designed as open loft space on a modular planning grid.
The ground level accommodates high-bay research labs for robotics and manufacturing technology research. The office building, which serves faculty, graduate students and administration, includes a conference center and lecture hall.
The materials palette was chosen to harmonize with the rest of the campus, but orchestrated and detailed to provide integrity to the construction and a unique identity to the College.
excerpts
Approach
We strive to design buildings that enrich the lives of the people who use them — buildings that gracefully fulfill functional and technical expectations, yet appeal as fully to the senses as to the intellect.
We pursue ideas that embody the timeless values of the institutions we serve. We believe good buildings reinforce the coherence of their surroundings and maintain their physical and cultural significance over time.
Clients and consultants are collaborative partners in our persistent search for the solution that best fits the needs of the program and site. Design emerges through a creative, iterative process of discovery.
Our senior staff share a common store of knowledge and experience, developed over nearly two decades, that informs every project. Principals actively lead project teams in a practice founded on a structure of participation.
We couple our depth of experience with a genuine delight in the craft and technology of building. We seek to rise above the exigencies of the program and budget to make memorable places that build community and celebrate the experience of being in a particular place at a particular time.
History
Founded in 1986 as a regional office of San Francisco-based Anshen+Allen, we became an autonomous practice a decade later. In 2005, to acknowledge the evolution of our firm, we formally changed our name from Anshen+Allen Los Angeles to CO Architects.
Our new name is intended to evoke our collaborative approach to determining the strategic needs of each project and the coherence we seek in our built work. These fundamental aspects of our firm remain unchanged, along with the active presence of our eight longtime senior partners, our 85-member staff and the nature of the work we do.
We are nationally recognized experts in academic, research lab and health care planning and design. Throughout our history, we have maintained that technical systems, planning, documentation and project management are all integrally important in the service of design. Numerous awards attest to our reputation for elegant solutions to the demands of complex projects.
Clients include: University of California (multiple projects on six campuses, including two medical centers), The Claremont Colleges, Kaiser Permanente, and the universities of Iowa, Washington and Wisconsin.
ACADEMIC PROJECTS
Ron W. Burkle Family Building
Peter F. Drucker Graduate Management Center
Claremont Graduate University
Claremont, Calif.
Completion date: 1998
- State-of-the-art teaching spaces tailored to two separate graduate management curricula
- Scale and character of three-story building responds to campus environment
For full-time students, the building is one of several important centers within the graduate university. For executives attending part time, the building is their campus. The courtyard — designed for large receptions, classes and informal study — symbolically and functionally defines this campus-within-a-campus.
Lowered one level from the street, the court allows direct access to the lower-level teaching spaces and functions as a breakout space for the flexible classrooms and case rooms. From the street, the building’s materials and massing maintain the scale and essential character of the surrounding campus. From the court, the transparent facade reveals its full three-story height as well as its internal functions and activities.
The entry level houses the lobby and administrative offices. Faculty offices and the dean’s suite are on the third level. One side of the study center pavilion opens to a terrace facing the street; the other side overlooks the courtyard.
HEALTH CARE PROJECTS
High Desert Medical Center
Lancaster, Calif.
- 550,000 g.s.f. building complex on 40 acres
- Inpatient, outpatient, D&T and support services
- Interconnected but separate structures provide flexibility and expandability for growing community
- Design employs natural and cultivated landscape to create a healing environment
The program consists of a 200-bed main hospital building, clinic and general services/central plant. Layers of enclosure, defined by rows of trees, buffer outside spaces against the harsher desert environment.
The AIA Citation of Excellence for this project praises the “effective functional relationships, logical expandability and discrete public access to individual service components [made possible by] a site plan that organizes access and parking in ways that make wayfinding inevitable.”
ENGINEERING PROJECTS
Bourns Hall College of Engineering
University of California, Riverside
Completion date: 1995
- 164,650-sq.-ft. facility for new College of Engineering
- Program spaces include research and instructional labs, lecture hall, seminar and conference rooms, and faculty and administration
- Two separate buildings form central courtyard
- AIA National Honor Award
Two separate buildings (lab and office) incorporate features that take advantage of the arid inland valley climate — shaded terraces, central open-air lobbies, exterior circulation balconies and an open pedestrian bridge that bisects the courtyard and links the two structures. The circulation system is open on both axes, creating a pedestrian link between the original core campus and future development.
Each building is organized around an open-air central stair at either end of the connecting bridge. To maximize long-term adaptability, the lab building is designed as open loft space on a modular planning grid.
The ground level accommodates high-bay research labs for robotics and manufacturing technology research. The office building, which serves faculty, graduate students and administration, includes a conference center and lecture hall.
The materials palette was chosen to harmonize with the rest of the campus, but orchestrated and detailed to provide integrity to the construction and a unique identity to the College.
client
CO Architects
(formerly Anshen+Allen)
project
Website (as launched in 2005)
audience
Potential clients, architecture community
goal
To convey the firm’s breadth of experience in, and collaborative approach to, the planning and design of academic, health care, research lab and civic buildings.
CO Architects
(formerly Anshen+Allen)
project
Website (as launched in 2005)
audience
Potential clients, architecture community
goal
To convey the firm’s breadth of experience in, and collaborative approach to, the planning and design of academic, health care, research lab and civic buildings.